Natural Selection

If you are wondering what the picture is about it’s one Bryony took from her bedroom window when she lived here. Depending on your eyesight / imagination the dark cloud in the centre looks a bit like an owl about to stoop on prey. Or not.

Today before work I swung by Mythop to check the floodgiven the number of Teal that have been there. As I approached a Barn Owl was quartering the sun dappled field to the north. It’s not particularly difficult to see Barn Owls locally given they hunt around Marton Mere, but it’s still life affirming to see one on the prowl.

At the office I was also fortunate enough to see a Peregrine tucking into a meal, most likely one of the Feral Pigeons that frequent the town. In the same way that there are kids living in this seaside town that have never been to the beach plenty of people reside in the town that don’t know these different birds of prey can be seen in the resort.

In the same vein on ‘Pointless’ yesterday there was a round where two of six answers nobody had guessed were butterfly names. One of the correct answers was Duke of Burgundy, which makes sense as they have been a very restricted species in living memory. What was more surprising was that the other pointless answer was Wall.

The Wall, or as it used to be generally known the Wall Brown, was a familiar sight when I was younger. There are still places where it is reasonably common in Britain but generally numbers have crashed. Other species have gone the other way of course, Comma and Speckled Wood establishing a large presence this far north, but it’s a sobering truth that you can’t even hope to effectively conserve a species you’ve never even heard of.